Microtransactions: ‘Non-Interactive Sequences, the Author and the Player’ and ‘Super Mario RPG and Alternative Dimensions’
November 2nd, 2009
Microtransactions:A randomised assortment of ideas too big for Twitter and too short for their own posts, neatly compiled into their own reoccuring segment.
NB: I’ve been working hard to continue the stream of Metroid Prime 3 articles, but as I round out my final few weeks of Uni I’ve had to fall back on banked material. I hope you don’t mind, I’ll be back with the program as soon as I can. Thanks.
Super Mario RPG and Alternative Dimensions
Gosh, what a peculiar game. As I said on Twitter sometime outside of recently “Playing Super Mario RPG (VC) is like opening the door to an alternative dimension.”. A couple of people misinterpreted my tweet though, so allow me to quickly elaborate as the remark has a few meanings:
Super Mario RPG was originally never released in PAL regions. In Australia, the most amount of information we’d ever received on the title prior to release was in a special RPG issue of Nintendo Magazine System (our equivalent of Nintendo Power). This issue was famously dubbed the “RPG issue” because of a massive feature spread over several pages previewing the now famous JRPG avalanche which hit the Super Nintendo late in its lifetime. (I think they also reviewed a handful of RPGs which were placed at the start of the review section to keep in theme, but I can’t quite recall now.) The magazine, unsurprisingly, featured Super Mario RPG on the cover. Ironically tough, most of the spotlighted games featured in the magazine wouldn’t see a PAL release until years later, a good majority of those on the PSone, GBA and DS—and not on the SNES—including Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.
As you can imagine the issue was something of a holy grail for RPG enthusiasts in Australia. Considering the popularity of the magazine and the rather dormant state of the internet, for many of us, this was likely our first real insight into these now iconic games. Unfortunately, for many of them, it ended up being a long tease. In the case of Paper Mario a tease that dragged on for 12 years, until it landed on the Wii’s Virtual Console service a year ago.
Therefore, as you can imagine: “Playing Super Mario RPG (VC) is like opening the door to an alternative dimension.”, stepping into the past and reclaiming what was once lost.
The second point of my tweet is simply to make the same remark players were making a decade ago, that is: the collaboration sure is an interesting one. The sad thing about this industry is that publisher’s rule the roost. Unlike in other media, it isn’t as easy for one developer to do their own interpretation of another developer’s property, even if the original developer permits. The whole process lies within the hands of the publishers who, in effect, legally internalize the creations of their developers.
Interpretations of other work therefore rarely happen, only in the rare instances where such interpretations and crossovers are managed internally or allowed by the owner of the intellectual property. Metroid: Other M is a great example, as is Capcom Vs SNK, SVC: Chaos and Namco X Capcom. Super Mario RPG is too a great example and was very much unprecedented for its time as it was one of the first interpretations of a franchise by someone other than the original creators (Wolfenstein 3D is another example, anyone have any more ideas?). For these reasons Super Mario RPG therefore felt unique, and playing it today still emits this alluring quality.
Non-Interactive Sequences, the Author and the Player
One of the core complaints leveled against Super Paper Mario and Metal Gear Solid 4 was the length of their non-interactive sequences. Super Paper Mario was too chatty and MGS4 can be considered as a game interwoven with a feature film. I know people have defended both games on the basis that the content in these sequences are actually quite good—and therefore doesn’t deserve the bad press—so I’d like to weigh in by agreeing with the assertion that so long as the content within these sequences actually serves a meaningful purpose, then they’re perfectly fine with me. (Meaningful purpose being a subjective term depending on the individual player). Of course, in saying this, MGS4 did have too much cyber babble and Super Paper Mario‘s dialogue did stretch the point at times. These are rather legitimate claims relative to other games on the market.
Games are a shared product between the designer and the player. The designer wants the player to experience certain things within their game, they want them to, to some degree, think in a certain way and act per se. The designer coerces the player’s actions by designing the nature of the world, but the designer isn’t the director, the player is. The player co-authors the experience. When the designer forces the player through a non-interactive sequence, the designer takes control from the player and pushes their own agenda. In this regard, I think that the designers and writers of MGS4 and Super Paper Mario became too invested in the messages they wanted to transmit during these sequences that they became overly directive of the experience and ultimately damaged the game(s).
I always go into a new game with the intent of being reasonable. Anything (side quests, narrative, sequences of gameplay, mechanics etc) that I feel as meaningless or damaging towards my experience, I won’t participate in. Although I read the majority of dialogue in Super Paper Mario, much of it I also skipped or skim-read simply because it dragged on and impeded on my experience. It’s the same reason why I’m disinterested in trophies for the Playstation 3, they just artificially lengthen the game. I personally don’t believe that the value proposition they’re offering me is worthy of committal—as we’ve discussed, this can feel like work. Not every player shares this view though, my work might be someone else’s challenge and so forth. It’s the subjective nature which makes designing games very tricky.
Microtransactions: Machinima and Incompatibilities
July 26th, 2009
Cannon Foddering
My brother and I went through a bit of a Amiga phase about 10 years ago when one was handed down with mountains of floppy disks by family members who had all conspicuously owned an Amiga during it’s hey day. We never played terribly much of the Amiga aside from a few notable classics, I mean why would you when you had a Playstation right alongside it? One of the first consoles we’d actually possessed during its peak period.
One of those classics was Cannon Fodder; a neat strategy title with British sensibilities and humour. Unfortunately the old girl is having problems outputting to the TV – my brother tried to resuscitate her years ago – which means this part of our gaming history has been closed of, as such. Nevermind, emulation ought to do the trick, later down the track. In the meantime though my brother decided to buy a SNES copy of Cannon Fodder, which we snapped up for a reasonable price on eBay, about a week before it went up for $5 on Good Old Games. Frustrated at this poor twist of luck and the finicky SNES d-pad controls, we tried out the SNES mouse to see if the two worked together – common sense right? They don’t. >_<
This brings me to another compatibility issue which I’ve left dormant for too long. There’s an import games store in Adelaide which I sometimes buy games from (I rarely buy retail these days). A few years ago I was given Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops as a birthday present from my brother, fast forward a year and I was given Portable Ops + (the expansion). Portable Ops was bought from Myer in one of their we’re-so-out-of-touch-we-unknowingly-mark-down-prices-on-limited-release-games sales* and Portable Ops+ was bought at the import store. On testing Portable Ops+, it refused to sync up with my existing save data from MGS:PO because my two versions were of different origins, Portable Ops of PAL and Portable Ops+ NTSC. Kind of senseless really.
Machinima
I’m surprised how well I manage to suppress my anger on this blog, because I occasionally fit the angry-at-life persona rather tidily. Considering the already bothered tone of the post, I ought to proceed with a continued level of choler.
You might remember that last semester I studied a games course brimming with cliched topics, including one of which; machinima. As part of the course, I had to read and study machinima, which I’ve honestly never liked. While the course highlighted some of the finer inner workings of the craft, let’s face the fact, machinima is terrible. I mean honestly, the medium is inherently inexpressive, the use of pre-existing game assets kills any individuality, the voice acting is generally poor and the jokes are either in-jokes or pure trite, often juvenile at that. I support the ideology and artistry behind machinima (and all fan-made produce for that matter) it’s wonderfully progressive and these people should be applauded for their versatile creativity. Yet, I can rarely watch any machinima without tensing up into fits of frustration at the pure indulgence of it all. Anyone feel the same way?
*Same reason I got Valkyrie Profile Lenneth so cheap too. You know, I use to sell games and electronics at Myers.
Microtransactions: Custom Soundtracks and Chip Tunes
June 23rd, 2009
Managing Custom Soundtracks in WipEout HD
Some months ago I discussed games in relation to music and music videos, attaching similarities between particular game titles and music tracks. Recently I’ve been engaging again in this activity for an entirely different reason. WipEout HD is the first game I own which allows for custom soundtracks, creating a phenomena into itself.
The WipEout HD playlist is unfortunately only nine tracks long. They’re good tunes but become repetitive rather quickly, meaning that you’ll want to swiftly import your own playlist. When I reached this stage I thought long and hard about the music that would best be appropriate for the WipEout play experience. That is, which songs evoked the same feelings as the feeling I get when playing Wipeout. I intially created a playlist of mostly manufactured dance/electronica music, some gelled nicely, others didn’t. I tried again and added a bunch of random favourites and found that all genres worked depending on the context. For example uplifting rock songs boded well with the plush UberMall and Sol 2 levels while not so much with the tracks that had a more industrial aestetic.
I just find it ammusing how this blog post I wrote a while ago actually attributes to a process external but relating to my gaming experience.
Chip Tunes – Tainted or Resurrected?
Wow, I’ve let this idea lie and rot for too long.
There’s an Australian TV show on the ABC called Collectors. Sure, I’m a collector myself but the usual selection of stamps and antiques featured don’t usually interest me. The show seems to be stepping up into pop culture goods. A few months ago, the show tickled my fancy, featuring the games collection of an Australian DJ. This guy also dabbles in chip tunes and although the show made viewers aware, it only discussed his profession to limited degree.
Out of sheer curiosity I tracked down some more information about this guy and realized that he’s in fact prominent Adelaide DJ, DJTr!p, and one of Australia’s leading chip tunes artist. You can sample some of his collection here.
While moseying through Tr!p’s MySpace page I scanned over his event listings and noted a series of gigs around Adelaide and the country. I then sat for a good while and tried to figure out why I honestly didn’t really care about attending any of these gigs. I thought it was cool that this local guy got featured on the show and I promote classic video games music, but I had no desire to attend any of his performances and I couldn’t figure out why.
I’m still not perfectly sure actually. My conclusion was going to be while I like classic games music, most of this new music fails to capture the elusive retro gaming appeal. I watched a segment on Good Game that previously covered Aussie chip tunes artists and to my accord it all sounded kinda ‘meh’. These guys fail to capture quality loops of retro tunes, that or like Tr!p, they are actually pretty skilled but the merging with electronica and other forms of music perhaps detracts from my personal enjoyment. I still can’t put my finger on it, perhaps like OC Remix music, I only enjoy listening to it in particularly random instances. ie. when I want to feel like “a child of the digital age” – if that makes sense. What are your thoughts on chip tunes music? Please, lemme know.
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